Published
5 years ago on
February 13, 2018
Ever since Bitcoin became that buzzword that your grandma brings up at the dinner table, the Reddit crypto community has seen massive growth; as subs such as r/CryptoCurrencies, r/Bitcoin, r/Ethereum, and r/Litecoin and are flooded with tens to hundreds of thousands of new subscribers coming to talk and learn everything there is to know about crytocurrencies from the content served up at these Reddit sub-communities. But with this massive new audience of crypto enthusiasts born overnight flocking to and obsessing over crypto currencies, the founders and moderators of these crypto communities are now faced with a new problem; what do you do when you have a massive audience born overnight that comes to depend on you and your community as a resource? I take a look at some of these communities and see how they have taken to the new attention as of recent. r/Bitcoin is the subreddit (sub community within Reddit) that has been around from the near inception of Bitcoin itself, but has experienced the most meteoric rise in growth, with over 700,000 subscribers and over 16,000 active users in the community at a given time, its beginnings were quite humble. In 2010, their viewership was a mere twenty readers. Hard to believe, considering it makes such big waves today; often gaining national media attention for content posted within. By 2012, the word was out amongst the Internet fan-boys and girls, and the sub had grown to over six thousand subscribers. Keep in mind; Bitcoin was valued at around $5.34 at this time in history. Fast-forward to February 2016, Bitcoin is at around $400 and the community is already abuzz over this new asset and its potential. To think there was a day when you could get in at such low numbers…. Now fast-forward to today to see where we’re at. Anybody can create a subreddit on Reddit. The original moderators of these communities are folks who just wanted to support a community about a given topic of interest. These “pioneer†moderators often do not know what to expect out of getting subscribers or what the community will contribute. When growth occurs in the crypto community to the scale that Bitcoin did (with an all-time high of $19,343.04 on December 16th 2017 coindesk.com), these mods react to keep control over their community in an effort to maintain sanity, or to push an agenda forward. In the case of r/Bitcoin, when the B-Cash (BCH) hard fork occurred in 2017, the sister community r/btc started openly promoting B-Cash to their community while playing advantages of B-Cash over Bitcoin, and pushing very apparent propaganda for the competing digital currency. Clearly, their agenda was made quite clear, and many of the community over at r/Bitcoin made sure to let it be known. To this day, there is a major feud between the Bitcoin and B-Cash communities that plays out on Reddit on a daily basis. While feuds are one part of the current state of Crypto communities on Reddit, other communities are seeking to unite the crypto world in a decentralized effort to improve the integrity of the content. r/CryptoCurrencies is one sub that looks to take an entirely different approach by seeking to collaborate and help the entire crypto community. According to their side-bar, their mission is to be the best resource on the Internet for new and experienced crypto investors. They aim to flag and remove scams and spam, advocate for the various cryptocurrencies that are solving various needs in our value-driven society without any particular push or agenda (although the mods do admit to their favorite cryptocurrencies), and to provide quality resources for people to learn about cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and quality news sources. Further, they offer an open invite to all other cryptocurrency subreddits to collaborate with them, welcome all newcomers, their mod team collaborates with each other frequently to improve the sub, and always reaches out to the community. Currently, r/CryptoCurrencies has partnered with the Crypto Trader Network, which is a network directory within Reddit of all reliable Reddit Cryptocurrency resources. While I will disclose Crypto Daily is closely affiliated with r/Cryptocurrencies, we did not receive any kind of compensation for writing this article, and we will leave it to our viewers to decide if their content and mission holds true. Featured Image Original Source: Wikipedia Commons Sponsored by
